Depending on your personal preferences when it comes to a night out, standing in a cramped music venue listening to a band you’ve perhaps never heard of is often a million times better than standing in a nightclub using bad strobe lighting and an even worse smoke machine.

Sometimes we would have heard about a band due to a preview in the NME, often derided as the hipster magazine of choice before hipsters even became a thing/derogatory term. Other times we’d have friends who had heard about a band, or knew someone, or sometimes we’d just get used to hanging out in pubs that had lists of bands that were playing every weekend.

Most of the UK adult population today will have some memory of attending a live music event of some sort. Yet, there are fears this won’t be the case for the current generations of teenagers and younger children.

BBC Newsbeat reported earlier this week that Jeff Horton, who runs the legendary 100 Club on London’s Oxford Street, said the continuing closures of music venues in the UK meant this aspect of the industry was reaching crisis point.

He reportedly said, “Without places like the 100 Club and other grassroots venues, where are tomorrow’s headline acts going to come from? You can’t keep churning out the same old acts, which you can already see is happening.”

There are various reasons why music venues in London and around the UK are closing at pace. A number of amazing clubs and venues have closed in London purely due to the Crossrail development, which is one of the modern and unique reasons in among the usual closures due to noise pollution or clubs being an unprofitable venture.

Some of the venues that became famous for “club nights” and “open mic” nights have been fortunate enough to find residencies elsewhere, but these are now maybe one night a week, if they’re lucky, in a pub or club somewhere else in London.

Despite the concerns of Horton and others across the music industry, there are still plenty of places across the UK where you can go and enjoy live music by bands that have a serious chance of making it big. Our own James Morton regularly plays to large crowds in venues all across Bristol, while back in London it’s almost impossible to have a night out in Camden Town without experiencing a live band. The problems will come when closures reach such a point that bands cannot get bookings because popular venues in the best locations are all booked months in advance.

For all the NME has its critics and is struggling to remain relevant as a print publication, it is difficult to argue against what good it does for the emerging music scene.

It’s probably too much to say live music is dying, but if venues keep disappearing there will fast become a disconnect between audience and musicians, and soon gigs will be reduced to live recordings in a garage being uploaded onto YouTube.